Many publishers and vendors of publications offer Internet purchasing services where consumers may buy publications over the Internet. Once purchased, the publications are typically delivered by a parcel service that may take two to three days.
Some consumers would rather immediately print a purchased document or a portion of the document rather than wait for it to be delivered. However the publishers and vendors are reluctant to provide a document to a consumer in electronic format for printing since, once provided in electronic format, the document may easily be copied and distributed to others without compensation to the publisher.
In order to provide a satisfactory solution to the publishers and vendors, a document provided in electronic form to a consumer must have some copy protection so that multiple copies of the document may not be printed. However, the copy protection must allow a consumer to reprint pages that were not properly printed the first time.